The James Hutton Institute

JHI is one of the world’s leading scientific organisations undertaking research focused on land, crops, pests, crop protection, food security, sustainable agriculture, water and the environment. The Institute brings together a broad range of science disciplines that interconnect to deliver a research strategy of finding solutions to the global challenges of providing food, forestry-based goods, energy and water from finite land and natural resources under changing environmental conditions. The JHI is a multi-site Institute (Dundee, Aberdeen and associated research platforms and farms) comprising of world class scientists leading and working in concert in the land, crop, food, water, environmental and socio-economic sciences.

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IN FRAMEWORK

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JHI will co-ordinate the consortium and act as Lead Partner. JHI will ensure the project is progressing according to the Grant Agreement and that partners are delivering the agreed outputs in a timely manner.

A network of neighbouring farmers in the Balruddery Catchment, Tayside, Scotland will be established as a Farmer Cluster, together with local stakeholder groups (SEPA, SNH, Tayside Biodiversity Partnership, local council officers, Soil Association and LEAF) to co-design and implement biodiversity friendly management strategies and monitor the impact across the catchment on pollinator biodiversity and pollination services. Facilitation and training will be provided through on farm events and workshops. Data and information from this Pilot Study, together with existing data from biodiversity studies at landscape scales will help assess landscape composition effects on functional biodiversity and ecosystem services. JHI’s social scientists will lead the development of the Hutton DigiFarm environment into a game for assessing farmer and public knowledge of biodiversity production strategies across the project.

JHI will:

• contribute to the development, implementation and analysis of the survey of existing UK farmers clusters to assess their performance and factors determining success

• contribute to current and potential private incentives for the adoption of agro-biodiversity enhancing measures by clusters’ farmers;

• co-ordinating and supervising the preparation of survey material, data collection and analysis; and,

• contribute to the development and circulation of summary information notes, policy briefs and academic publications regarding outcomes

• supporting the review and selection of sustainability indicators

• participating in the design of the prototype socio-ecological network for selected studies, concerning the integration of natural assets interactions (impacts and dependencies) with other components of the system

• prepare the guides and templates for natural assets profiling and assessment of impact and dependencies of farming systems on natural capital and co-ordinate data checking (validation) and impact assessment analysis and participating in the analysis of regional impact forecasting potential; and co-ordination of report and manuscript preparation;

• participating in generalization of network model to MADM concerning the integration of natural assets impacts and dependencies with other components of the decision framework